Non-standard Zeckendorf decompositions; or, Tribonacci within Fibonacci

Abstract

We study $B(n;k)$, the number of ways of writing $n$ as a sum or difference of the first $k$ Fibonacci numbers. We show that $B(0;k)$ satisfies the Tribonacci-like recurrence $B(0;k+1)=B(0;k)+B(0;k-1)+B(0;k-2)$ and that $B(n;k)$ satisfies a modified version of this recurrence.